Enarmonia Masters the Toon Boom Pipeline to Grow and Deliver

Enarmonia is based in Turin,
Italy and is one of the most
famous animation production studios in Europe.
Since it’s founding in 1999,
the studio has established
itself as a key player in the
industry thanks to its strong
international presence,
dedication to high artistic
quality and its highly professional staff.
Enarmonia Masters the Toon Boom
Pipeline to Grow and Deliver Quality
Enarmonia was one of the first companies in Europe to
adopt the Toon Boom pipeline. They discovered Toon
Boom as they were searching for new solutions to produce
animation digitally and, as they soon found out, the match
with Toon Boom was perfect. And knowing that Toon Boom
was increasing its presence in Europe was just an added
bonus.
Stefania Raimondi, Producer, and Federica Maggio, Executive Producer, put together a team of artists who have
contributed to the studio’s growth, focusing on continuous
education and providing the opportunity to get training
abroad with some of the world’s most famous directors.
Enarmonia produces feature films, TV series, commercials,
publishes illustrations, as well as creating and animating
characters for cinema, TV, advertising, internet, direct video
and others. To date, Enarmonia has worked on 22 movies
and more than 20 television series.
The collaboration between Enarmonia and Toon Boom
started in 2004. Enarmonia artists, who were specialized
in traditional animation, at that time used Toon Boom’s
Concerto application to produce the totally digital series
Gino il Pollo (Gino the chicken) and Le avventure di Neve
& Gliz (The adventures of Neve and Glitz). “At the time, we
preferred Concerto over Flash, because of its wide range
of tools”, explains Lisa Arioli, Head of Creative team. “In
one single application, there were good drawing tools, the
possibility to have a global library, a 3D camera and special effects. Since then, we have kept up with the technology, tightening our relationship with Toon Boom. Thanks to
Toon Boom Support team’s great availability, the software
has often been adapted to our needs with an evident advantage for both”.
One of Enarmonia’s latest productions, Me, Myself and
the Others, is handled by Enanimation, a sister company
founded in 2003. This animated series is completely digital,
from the models to the final compositing, including backgrounds and storyboards. The series includes 52 episodes
of 5 minutes each and takes its inspiration from a novel by
the late Andrea Pazienza, a great Italian artist. Me, Myself
and the Others is an Italian-German co-production between
Enanimation - Rai Fiction - Motus and MotionWorks, and
was entirely produced in Europe. The international distribution of the series is trusted to Enanimation in collaboration
with London-based Entertainments Rights.
To date, Me, Myself and the Others has been sold in 25
countries, with ongoing discussions in Northern and Eastern Europe, Asia and Central, Eastern and North Africa. The
series first aired on Italy’s RAI 2 channel from November 20,
2008 until December 24, 2008 and obtained good viewing
results with between 9% and 10% share of the viewing audience, similar results were found in Germany.
“The Toon Boom pipeline has been
precious and has represented an ideal
solution to communicate with the other
studios.”
The characters in Me, Myself and the Others are colourful
animals living in a fantasy jungle. Entirely created in Enarmonia studios, both Toon Boom Harmony and Storyboard
Pro were used to deliver this project. “All the artistic choices – declares Lisa, who worked on the storyboards together
with Pierprincipio Di Già and Paola Solaro - were made to
have a funny series: bright colours, amusing songs, simple and pretty characters painted with unreal colours and
dubbed with humorous voices that it’s easy to grow fond
of them!”.
The team drew and coloured the characters directly in Toon
Boom Harmony. Davide Pilisi, one of the artists, dealt with
the rigging of the characters and the setting [up] of the
library. “Colour models are broken down in pieces for the
rigging to allow the cut out animation – explains Davide once finalized, models setting, colour models are put and
organized into the global library so it can be used for animating or even before [that] for storyboarding. The Harmony drawing tools have allowed us to maintain the grace and
the natural effect which is typical of traditional animation”.
Mita Odello, Luca Fernicola and Lisa Arioli worked on the
animation. “In this way - affirm the artists - we could directly experience the advantages the Toon Boom pipeline
has brought from the artistic point of view. Thanks to Storyboard Pro, in fact, the transition from the storyboard to
the animation stage happens in an easy and quick way. The
module, moreover, has excellent drawing tools, [is] easy to
use and suitable for [anyone] who, like us, has a traditional
animation education. Storyboard Pro exports its data shots
as separate Harmony scenes complete [with] images, sound
and basic camera movements. This is one of the features
we like the most: it translates into time savings, control, accuracy and no loss of data.
Once in Harmony, thanks to the batch processing render,
we can easily control the progress of the project without
effort or time wasted. It’s important to remember that Me,
Myself and the Others results from the collaboration with
the German company MotionWorks and the Italian company Motus, based in Fano, which had two directors working
on the project. The Toon Boom pipeline has been precious
and has represented an ideal solution to communicate with
the other studios”.
From the management point of view, the Toon Boom
pipeline resulted in increased efficiency in several areas
in particular the human resources and the production cost
optimization with the consequent higher flexibility of the
production department.
“Another important characteristic – continues Federica
Maggio, Executive Producer – is represented by the fact that
the production pipeline is being modified and integrated
on the basis of the project which has to be created and of
the production needs. The sound organization, the modification of the production processes as well as the more and
more advanced software techniques have allowed us to
administrate whole productions in Europe, keeping, in this
way, the quality high while remaining competitive”.
“…the adaptation of the technical characteristics to the
artistic goals represents for the Toon Boom users a great
advantage from the point of view of the efficacy and of
the production needs. The introduction of 2D/3D integration will surely help Enarmonia’s artists to create in a more
dynamic and integrated way. Belonging to the Toon Boom
community also helped us find potential partners in other
parts of the world”.
The collaboration between Enarmonia and Toon Boom is
not only strong, but also represents a win-win for all involved. In the last five years, the Turin studio has devoted
itself to training students to specialize in digital animation
production using Harmony. The most recent training session was 600 hours long and attended by more than 20
students.
In the coming months, Enarmonia will start pre-production
of the second series of Me, Myself and the Others in the
City, introducing new characters and setting up which
could be defined as… “hi-tech” pipeline! The team wil also
embark on a new multi-platform and cross-media project
titled CrossWorlds. Enarmonia is certainly a very dynamic
studio using the Toon Boom pipeline to the fullest and rapidly becoming a must-have partner when producing high
quality animation in Europe.
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